Man Utd's Soaring Wage Bill Reflective of Double-Edged Nature of PL's TV Deal

The numbers are in and they're what we all expected: Premier League clubs are loaded like never before. 

After a summer in which cash rained from the Sky (and, ahem, BT, too) like a Sepp Blatter press conference, pockets are dragging along the ground and league spending has adopted the conservatism of that seen in Entourage. Unsurprisingly, Manchester United lead the way.  

According to data released this week by Sporting Intelligence, United top the Premier League when it comes to wage bills. On average, the Red Devils pay each of their players £5.77 million annually, ahead of Manchester City (£5.42 million), Chelsea (£4.51 million), Arsenal (£3.71 million), Liverpool (£3.01 million) and Tottenham Hotspur (£2.68 million). 

When set against performance, it's perhaps not the table United want to be topping. In 2016-17, only Sunderland are spending more money per point in the Premier League than the club from Old Trafford. Still, such an order is to be expected amid the division's landscape and when you factor in club size and financial strength.

The significant part, however, is the way United's outlay is reflective of the way the Premier League's colossal TV rights deal has a doubled-edged nature for its clubs. 

Up more than £1 million per player on last year, United's wage bill is now the biggest in world football. This season, the club have gone past the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid in this respect, highlighting some of the issues facing those in England despite their immense wealth: the question of value, one's position in negotiation and the extent of the financial commitment on unpredictable commodities, determined perhaps more by the market than by choice. 

After all, United are paying their squad more than anyone else despite not having Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Luis Suarez, Gareth Bale or Neymar on the books.  

Rank	Club	Avg Annual per Player
1	Man Utd	£5,770,000
2	Barcelona	£5,649,091
3	Man City	£5,423,077
4	Real Madrid	£5,051,875
5	Chelsea	£4,513,600
6	PSG	£4,476,835
7	Bayern Munich	£4,165,600
8	Juventus	£3,977,569
9	Arsenal	£3,707,407
10	Liverpool	£3,012,414

On the surface, such figures paint a picture of United having a flawed model of operation at present. There's a disconnect between outlay and points won, seemingly stemming from an approach abundant in cash but lacking in clarity.

But United would rightly point out there are some factors to consider here. The obvious one is that they've gone harder than others in the first phase of the Premier League's new £8 billion TV rights deal. Paul Pogba, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Eric Bailly were signed as mega inflation hit, seeing United agree to wages that will have eclipsed those of equivalent deals done prior to last summer. 

Arsenal, for example, will have a different-looking wage bill if and when Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez sign new contracts in the current market. 

It's important to remember, too, that Ibrahimovic arrived without a transfer fee. On an annual salary of £13 million per year (per ESPN FC), the Swede contributes heavily to the wage bill but didn't cost United anywhere near what he would have had he been under contract elsewhere. Wages are only one part of expenditure. 

It's also not clear from Sporting Intelligence whether the recent contract renewals and salary hikes for Bale, Ronaldo and Toni Kroos at Real Madrid are factored into the data. The anticipated renewals of Messi and Suarez at Barcelona will change the look of things, too. United sitting atop the wage-bill table might only be temporary. 

Even if it's not, however, the Red Devils would argue their financial strength makes extravagant spending completely reasonable. Commercially the club is a monster, the wage bill as a proportion of total revenue is healthy, and after three seasons of relative underachievement, spending heavily could be considered justified in order to restructure a squad of conflicting ideas and to regain a lost lustre. 

For United, such a situation isn't problematic now, but it could be if underachievement continues. Committed money is an issue for all sporting clubs/franchises because it shapes what you can do next and because it sets a pattern: Over-paying for underperforming players can mean needing to go to another level of spending again to address it.

The problem, then, can go round in circles, and that's an issue even more relevant for many of United's Premier League rivals. The data from Sporting Intelligence shows that 19 of the league's 20 clubs pay on average more than £1 million per year per player. In La Liga, only seven clubs do so; in Serie A, it's only six; in the Bundesliga, it's five. 

Perhaps the standout figure is that Sunderland and West Brom have higher wage bills than Sevilla and Villarreal. You could make a strong argument that neither English club own a player who would get into the first teams at the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan or El Madrigal, and yet there they are, paying a fortune for what they have anyway. 

This ties into the comments made by Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger last summer, when he expressed how the Premier League's cash was becoming its own obstacle and how it was trapping clubs in a cycle of spending that's not necessarily sustainable.

Per the Telegraph, Wenger said: 

"

Today in Europe you have two markets: One for the English clubs and one for the rest of Europe. The danger of the English situation is that the English clubs can suffocate themselves in the long term. Why? Because they buy players at a very high price. That means there are very high wages linked with it and, if they are wrong, they will have these players with high wages who cannot move anywhere else.

I have told you before the criteria for the price of a player but you could add one more: the identity of the buyer. When the buyer is English, it is true that it multiplies the transfer by two or three or sometimes by 10. If an English club does not come in, he is worth £5 million but, if an English club comes for the same player, he is worth £35 million or 40 or 50.

"

Other leagues will quickly point out they have more pressing issues such as economic relevance, and they'd be right in arguing such. The issues inherent in a tsunami of cash are ones most would happily take, but sometimes it's easy to forget that those issues are there. 

For many Premier League clubs, the new TV deal has pushed them into a situation where astute building is complicated. Deals for what you already have get bigger and committed money swells; a cumbersome wage structure is established that's problematic if performance gains don't follow. If you don't spend, your ambition is questioned. 

Bigger clubs tend to be more insulated in this respect, with their greater number and size in revenue streams. But the current hyper inflation has pushed England's second-tier clubs into a position where negotiation is a one-way affair, where value is hard to find and where short-termism is taken to another level. 

External forces, then, are demanding clubs make greater financial commitments and thus take on more risk, without really shortening the odds of success. United to an extent are emblematic of it for now, their outlay not corresponding to points, having gone harder than most at the beginning of this TV rights cycle and surge in inflation. 

That could quickly change, of course. But the Premier League right now is showing that being loaded has two sides to it.